Australia

Edward O’Dwyer

At that point came the first signs 
of tears on their way, and all 
there was for her to do was to stand up 
and to turn away 

from the rabble of other voices, 
all the clanking and rattling coming from the kitchen, 
the ding of the till drawer closing, 

face out the window of the café, 
look through the couldn’t-be-bothered weather, 
through the lunchtime crowds, 

zig-zagging 
once, and again, and again, gaining the water’s edge, 
passing through lush Dutch fields, 
past their waving windmills, 

around Azerbaijani oil rigs, 
through the syrupy air pollutions of Indian cities 

and then out over more water, to another land’s edge,
an exotic stretch of beach, her boyfriend there, 
his hair grown longer, wavier, 
a lighter shade now, one not unlike the sand, 

the sun beating down 
as he applies a generous squirt of sun cream 
to the bronzed back and shoulders 
of a girl that went to her school,

that she never got on with, 
with whom, though nothing really happened, 
there was a tension she couldn’t quite put a finger on.